The Challenge
The branding needed to reflect Flatiron's range of values; diversity, rigor, and inspiring creativity, to name a few. The team had a limited time to complete the re-launch, and the conflicting values made it difficult to communicate effectively within a single brand mark. A solution was devised by applying rigor and hard work's values within the brand mark and the design language to "inspire creativity."
Refreshing the Brand
The "double slash" icon leads into the updated wordmark, extending beyond the word Flatiron, visually breaking the design grid and emphasizing the rule breaker metaphor in the brand's values. The slashes create a visual upward motion leaning on the wordmark that suggests 'Flatiron School will elevate you higher.', the reconfiguration of the slashes mimics the way developers write code. The team decided to simplify the brand by removing 'The' in the final lockup.
My Role
My role as Creative Director / Lead designer as I collaborated with Flatiron's Leadership team, external branding agencies on brand design direction, marketing design, and Interior design architect firm MCDC. ​​​​​​​
The Space Problem
The original campus was a large beige canvas with minimal furnishing and poorly utilized space. The challenge here was to create permanent classrooms for Web Dev, iOS Dev students with flexible meetings and common areas. The school hosts various events, meetups, student presentations, science fairs, and industry mixers; they needed room to accommodate large groups where set up time required a lot of manual work.

After speaking with staff and students, we identify the priorities in creating a fully utilized space.
1. Reduced preparation and clean-up time. 
2. Flexible space and arrangement for socializing and collaborating.
3. Increase classroom, meeting rooms, private phone booths. 
4. It needed to be more fun and inspiring.​​​​​​​
Interior Design Direction ​​​​​​​
The design direction for space focused on a friendly yet modern designed environment, where collaboration can happen anywhere. Splashes of brand colors add vibrancy to the crisp design with graphic decals highlighting critical figures in computer science history introducing the past, present, and future.'
The Solution
Before the redesign, the campus space was not fully utilized and required manual labor hours to get ready for any event. With this in mind, the Flatiron team worked with the architects to solve this problem by mixing different size and shape tables with multiple configurations looking messy. The newly defined campus layout offered numerous areas for creating flexible, collaborative workspaces for staff and students. ​​​​​​​
The past, present and future​​​​​​​
The finished design has a contemporary feel and friendly ambiance delivered through simple materials with striking graphics installations. The revamped campus's centerpiece is a collaborative graffiti wall created by students, staff, and NYC street artists. The mural reflects the brand's ethos and ideals and serves to inspire past, present, and future students of coding power. The outcome represented diversity and collaboration.​​​​​​​
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